Welcome to my blog!

We find ourselves in challenging times. To meet them more easily, I believe involves challenging ourselves to move beyond old, established habits and patterns.

Perhaps I am a bit late fully entering into the 21st century by starting my blog now, in 2010! In that my work and message has so much to do with slowing down and settling into a deeper knowing beyond and prior to our cultural modes, it may be appropriate to step extra slowly into the world of blogging and other cyber realities.

I suspect that, if you are drawn to my blog and the words here, you may also value this slower, deeper state we are all capable of. I invite you to read on and regularly, and hope the words below can support you in enhancing your ability to be, even in the midst of all the doing required in our modern world.

Sunday, 2 November 2014

Heart and Targus

On my way home from co-teaching a post-graduate Craniosacral
Biodynamics seminar in Switzerland with my husband, Franklyn Sills, I feel
inspired to write about an insight I had during the class. The seminar was
entitled Awakening the Heart. At one
point, as I was introducing the class to a presentation on the embryological
development and energetic ignition of the heart, I spoke of how the
presentation was not entirely in chronological order. I invited the class to
enter a time machine with me. Someone commented, “The Targus!” This remark delightfully
led me to a new way of looking at the heart and it mysterious functions. I
heard myself explaining that the heart, like Dr. Who’s Targus, was in some ways
bigger on the inside than the outside.

The physical heart in the adult is about the size of a fist.
Its effects, however, are so much bigger! The heart rhythms are now known to affect
a person’s ability to regulate emotions, to be healthy, socially relational and
intuitive. The research of the Institute of Heartmath (www.heartmath.org) shows
that when the heart rhythms are coherent or chaotic, the entire system tends to
follow suit. The heart produces important hormones and has its own nervous
system, sending more neural information to the brain than the brain sends to
the heart. There is much more inside the heart than the blood and muscle we can
feel and see!

When we look at the embryology of the heart, we begin to
understand its remarkable relational ability to sense and be connected with
what is far outside its walls. The blood and cells forming the heart begin developing
on the outside of what becomes the actual embryo body, within the structures
that become the umbilical cord and placenta. From the beginning, these cells
are reaching out to make relationship with mother, to connect with her blood
and glands in order to receive nourishment necessary for survival and growth.
These cells travel through the embryo, feeding primarily what will develop into
the brain and nervous system, pausing at the cranial end before returning to
their extra-embryonic source. Where this pause occurs, the heart begins to
form. In the fourth week, the faster growing nervous system expands as the
embryo folds forward. In this process, the heart meets the energetic heart
center. An energetic ignition occurs and the heart begins to beat.

In the little embryo, the heart is huge. This “heart bulge”
can be viewed in the very center, or heart, of

the embryo. The rest of the body
grows around it, and eventually it seems smaller as it rests within the chest.
It remains through life, however, an essebtuak influence on our physiology and
relational presence.

While the physical heart in adults is not huge, the
energetic field of the heart is the biggest of any organ in the body. The
heart’s bio-electrical field has an amplitude about 60 times greater than that
of the brain. The bio-magnetic field generated by the heart is over 5000 times
greater in strength than the field of the brain. It can be sensed several feet
away from the body. We might say the heart is much bigger on the outside than
it is on the inside! Perhaps, it is an inverted Targus…

Apparently involved in intuitive processes, evidence
suggests “the physical heart is coupled to a field of information not bound by
the classical limits of time and space,” and has been found to receive and
process information about events before they actually occur! (from 2014 article
by founders of Hearthmath, Rollin McCraty and Doc Childre, The Intuitive Heart, p. 11). Like the Targus, the mysterious heart seems to
have abilities to reach forward in time, or at least to be receptive to what
the future may be offering. The work of Heartmath shows that such abilities are
supported by simple acts of heart awareness, like breathing into the heart or
feeling it beating. When we listen to the heart, we are more likely to receive
its wisdom. We begin to settle into more coherent heart rhythms, which we can
also enhance by orienting to what we appreciate or feel grateful for. We might
begin by appreciating our hearts, which have been beating since four weeks
after we were conceived!

If the fields of the heart are so big and so connected with
other fields, it is not much of a stretch to see that tending to your own heart
can benefit not only you, but also all those around you. Heart coherence can
enhance our empathy, compassion and understanding of others. In the seminar
last week, we explored the effects of early history and the profound healing
possible when we establish safety within the relational field between two
people with an intention to deepen together. As the little ones within us begin
to perceive safety, we can settle under the old wounding, emerging into
presence. We can settle into resonance with universal formative forces and
re-create ourselves within an infinite field of love.

3 comments:

Hello Cherionna,I enjoyed reading your warming words and felt grounded and strengthened in my own belief that love is at the core of who I am (http://mindfulnessbasedcounselling.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/head-and-heart-mr-duffy-and-martin-luther-king/), thank you. Howard

BTW - it's TARDIS not Targus - Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, if I remember correctly.

Hello Howard,Thanks so much for your kind comments. I'm grateful my writing affected you that way! Thanks also for enlightening me re Tardis vs. Targus! I'm new to the UK and still learning British! How embarrassing! Yet my heart seems to hold the dual reality with no problem! I look forward to also checking out your site.Cherionna

I just received this quote in an email. It seems so relevant: "Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh